I don’t think I’m that qualified to know what will make you happy but I know how much I have suffered, both from depression and various bereavements and I know that through lack of support during my adult life I have had limited opportunities in almost every sphere of life imaginable so have had to cultivate the art of happiness by best learning to play the hand of cards I’ve been given. Below are my thoughts which may help you and I sincerely hope they do for this is my contribution to the never ending quest for human fulfilment and happiness which, let’s face it, we all yearn for and strive to attain.
The first rule is to accept that life isn’t fair. Religious people will tell you that if you live a righteous life you will gain your rewards later on but what about now? We need to understand that while our actions will have an effect both on us and others, leading a good life won’t necessarily give us all we strive for though leading a bad one is sure eventually to bring us and others heartache so don’t bother doing that. Just because Bill has a fast car; Good job and lovely looker for a partner and a nice house in a salubrious part of town it doesn’t mean you will too or will be able to for various reasons. Not everything is meant for everybody but the natural sense of justice felt by children often makes the adults we become rail against this inequality. Look for your happiness in different ways and from different things.
Live in the present. I thought that with just three months’ difference between the ages of my late husband and I, we would go together into old age. Not so. He died at the tragically young age of thirty-one so remember that here and now is all you have. Make the most of it by trying as hard as possible not to worry – Difficult if not impossible when you have terminal illness affecting either you or family members or debts to pay or your children giving you hell but essential if you want to feel even momentarily happy.
If you’ve quarrelled with someone, apologised and they won’t accept it then the problem now becomes theirs and not yours. The necessary guilt you felt, which triggers remorse which only a psychopath doesn’t feel, becomes a wasted emotion leading to illness if you go on feeling it after you have tried to make amends. However refusal to apologise is a sign of arrogance and an inability to admit you can ever be wrong which will lead you to greater unhappiness so do the right thing and say you’re sorry. If in your turn you cannot forgive someone because they’ve done something so terrible to you, keep away from them and write down all the things you’d like to see happen to them including that which you’d like to do to them and then burn the paper on which they are written or give yourself a time and date after which you’ll no longer think about the event and stick to it. If you return to it in your mind then distract yourself at once.
Laugh. I’ve known severely disabled people who have terminal illnesses and who have done this, including those who are deaf and blind and one grossly disfigured by a terrible disease who knew the value of laughter. I spend a good proportion of my life in one place, have no family support whatsoever and blindness is not my only disability though the others are quality of life threatening rather than life threatening. I’m intelligent enough to know that I am missing out on a number of things others have as well as humble enough to realise that others are worse off and I deliberately find something to laugh at each day.
Do not let others count your blessings. If they do then tell them quite firmly that you did arithmetic at school and that they should occupy themselves counting their own. Don’t count theirs either. You can’t have it both ways. You don’t carry their crosses and they don’t carry yours.
If someone asks how you are tell them. That way you’ll know who your friends are. If they switch off, tell you all about themselves and then walk off before sympathising with or listening to you then you’ll know to return the “favour” next time. Politely make your excuses and go but if you suspect that they would have listened but really did have to rush off or were more in need of a listening ear than you were on the first occasion, give them the benefit of the doubt.
Avoid cliché spouters and those bursting with trite silly phrases. These are normally shallow people who haven’t been tested yet. They’re thin ice. If you trust the weight of your problems to them you’ll fall in and drown in their indifference. Also they’re likely to be only “fair weather” friends and who needs those?
Seek to make up any arguments before the end of each day.
Sing! While your neighbours may not appreciate this, your brain will as the endorphins you will produce will make you feel happier. I sing every day and tied in with this is the entreaty to listen to music. Music is beneficial and I should know. When my grandmother died I fell into deep depression, lasting fourteen months for which I needed medication. I made up my mind, following my recovery, that I would listen to music and sing each day and despite being mugged, flooded out of my flat, driven mad by an anti social git of a neighbour who played loud music all night for seventeen months and now having a foot problem called plantar fasciitis which has successfully parted me from my guide dog while I get it treated and hopefully cured, I have not needed treatment for depression again. Yes of course there are days when I am angry and despairing but the music holds me up and stops me going under. It could do the same for you.
Avoid religious control freaks who want to convert you to their ideas and tell you there’s “jam tomorrow”. None of us knows what will happen when we die. Now though we do know we are in our own time and space, here now and our discontent will be fuelled by finding our prayers will largely go unanswered either because there really is a god who knows we’re praying for the wrong things or because there isn’t and we’re talking to ourselves.
Don’t cling to what doesn’t matter. What doesn’t matter are scores of material possessions beyond a certain level really necessary for comfort; Good looks which will fade; A pristine house which people are too afraid to visit or live in; The latest designer car or pair of shoes and whether your children are as bright as your neighbours’. Your children will have traits of their own which you will do well to cultivate and nurture and praise them for.
What does matter are the things that endure such as friendship (once you know who your real friends are); Good manners; Treating others with respect and not allowing one person from any particular group to be the basis for your opinion of all the rest in that group and kindness. The greatest compliment one person can pay another is to say they are kind.
Learn to distinguish between wants and needs. Advertisers will tell you that you need this or that product and they’ll try to project you into a future you may not have which will further aggravate your discontentment with the present.
Know your limits when it comes to shouldering other people’s problems. You can’t expect to be a listening ear all the time. I have a sleep problem brought on by not seeing light. When I need to sleep the phone bell is turned off and if people come to the door I turn them away unless they are really desperately in need of help. You have to be “out” to people sometimes.
Try not to bear grudges. Someone I know talked unkindly about me once within my hearing. He told others I was not worth getting to know and some believed him. Eventually he needed my help and I gave it. Yes I’d have got initial satisfaction by telling him to: “get stuffed” but in the long term it’s been more productive to do the other thing. The gossip has stopped now. An elderly man has been given pleasure by being able to work his digital radio and I think I am now counted among his friends.
Remember it’s not possible to feel happy all the time. When you fail to, it isn’t a sign of weakness but a natural human reaction either to an imbalance of human suffering to which you’ve been exposed or the first storm to hit your little boat. Cry then and remember that self-pity and self-loving, like charity, should begin at home but not end there. If they don’t begin at home, they can’t flow out to others.
Finally remember that nothing lasts forever. True there may be one disaster or vile life event ready to take the place of the last but we’re all on a spectrum. In the Arctic the sun shines for less time than in the desert and so when it does learn to appreciate the brief intervals you may get. You may think the desert is nice or to have the sun shining all the time would be great but remember the sun is not kind in large doses and some adversity is necessary for character building. You will come through for the stark fact is that there are only two choices – To live, with all that living implies or to opt out. If you do, it’s for good. We have a one-way ticket for journeys of unequal length for life is a pre-death state. We have to hope that things will improve while battling with them till they do; while the clock is ticking our time away so to waste it being permanently miserable would seem to me to be the ultimate tragedy. Take courage, keep going and sometimes, just sometimes, you’ll find the odd diamond day among the stones you have to tread upon. Good luck!
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